The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Dare’
(Format used for this book: Print–hardback)
I have forced myself to TOTALLY slow my roll with my Book Of The Month boxes.
I have little to zero self control when it comes to buying books (ESPECIALLY when they are used, on sale or at a completely amazing price!) and BOTM always always ALWAYS has some AMAZING ones for me to pick from.
Every 4 weeks I get my little email and I’m like “OHHHHHHHHHHHH How do I CHOOSE????”
And having that precious blue box arrive on my doorstep just MAKES MY BOOKWORM DAYYYYYY, YALL.
But my TBR pile on my bedroom bookshelf has grown quite exponentially large since March 2020 and I have GOT to whittle it down a bit before I continue to add to it.
So alas….I am FORCING my hand to click on the words “Skip This Month” until I get things under control.
I have done it twice now….and I’m damn proud of myself for that LOL…but we will see how many more times I can do it before I cave 🤣
This lovely book has been chilling on my shelf for a bit now and I knew when I finally got around to reading it that it would be a phenomenal read.
It absolutely was.
Not an easy book to read for several reasons I’ll explain in a minute, but a very, very good one regardless.
Here is the official summary:
“Adunni is a fourteen year old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education.
The only daughter of a broke father, she is a valuable commodity. Removed from school and sold as a third wife to an old man, Adunni finds that her life amounts to this: four goats, two bags of rice, some chickens and a new TV. When unspeakable tragedy swiftly strikes in her new home, she is secretly sold as a domestic servant to a household in the wealthy enclaves of Lagos, were no one will talk about the strange disappearance of her predecessor, Rebecca. No one but Adunni…
As a yielding daughter, a subserviant wife, and a powerless servant, Adunni is repeatedly told that she is nothing. But Adunni won’t be silenced. She is determined to find her voice–in a whisper, in song, in broken English–until she can speak for herself, for the girls like Rebecca who came before, and for all the girls who will follow.
Featuring a remarkable, unforgettable heroine, Abi Dare’s’ incredible debut novel is a heartbreaking coming of age story that vividly captures a young woman’s courageous struggle for the right to choose her own future.”
I want to give some trigger warnings right away: This book does contain physical abuse of multiple forms as well as sexual assault.
Unfortunately, all of the abusive moments are horrifically impactful details of the main character’s life that can not be excluded.
But if reading about those topics is very emotionally hard for you, I think you may want to proceed into it’s pages with caution or avoid them all together.
The abuse Adunni suffers at such a young age (her character is the same age as my oldest son which was completely jarring for me to realize ) is one of the things that makes this novel hard to read.
I always have a difficult time reading about anything violent…ESPECIALLY when it involves females and even more so when it involves children.
This book is fictional, but many of the situations and abuses that occur in the pages are based on real life experiences by young girls growing up and living in Nigeria every day…things the author herself witnessed and has been told.
Again though…I understand that a person’s complete and entire story must be told to fully understand them….their day to day lives, their family dynamics, their culture, their traditions, their personality traits, their desires, their motivations, their frustrations, their confusions, their disappointments, their pain, their trials, their hopes, their triumphs and their dreams.
Adunni is a fierce and strong young woman with a brilliant mind, gentle heart and extreme amounts of determination and hope. Even though all of these terrible and unspeakable traumas have happened to her and greatly affected her, she does not let them define her or steal who she is deep inside. She holds onto her inner being with the tightest grip she can, never letting it go or fade away.
Another thing that made this book a little hard to read was the writing style the author used.
It does take a couple chapters to get used to it, but it adds so so so so much to the realness of the story.
It is incredibly unique and in my opinion so very powerful.
She writes from Adunni’s perspective the entire book, and Adunni is in the very beginning stages of learning the English language. The entire story is written in a kind of broken, nonstandard English.
Abi Dare’ explained why she decided to write this book in this way in an interview from March 2020:
“I wanted to make sure that every single thought of Adunni, every sight, every smell, everything she heard was well-recorded. I couldn’t write it in Yoruba because that would just kill accessibility but I thought if I could at least break it down a little bit into nonstandard English, it’s not pidgin English. It’s her own voice, her own words. It forced me not to describe things in generic terms, not to use the same metaphors and similes that I was used to, that I learned in English language. I really wanted her story to be authentic, to be her own story.”
(If you’re interested in reading the interview in it’s entirety—I say wait until after you’re done reading the book because they are a couple teensy spoilers—here is the link. It was conducted by a Nigerian teacher and gives great insight into the book’s creation and message:
https://assembly.malala.org/stories/abi-dari-interview )
Now that I am finished reading the book, I can not imagine reading this story and it carrying the same emotional impact without this unique writing style.
(I also think it is probably a PHENOMENAL audiobook to listen to BTW!)
There is a whole lot of factual information woven into the story about the culture, traditions and history of the country of Nigeria as well, which I also highly valued and appreciated.
Yall know any book that educates me in ANY WAY I lean into HARD.
While many things happen throughout this book, I feel like the main underlying theme of the entire story is HOPE.
Adunni is a FIGHTER, yall. So many things are thrown into her life to knock her down…and she gets up over and over and over again. The hope and tenacity she has is limitless.
She will break your heart and inspire you in a bagillion ways….and when the story is over, you will be sad to say goodbye to her.
And you will also be crossing your fingers for a sequel because there is SO MUCH MORE of her story to be told!
Ms Dare’ gets a huge BRAVO and all the thumbs up from me for this one.
POWERFUL is the perfect adjective to describe every single piece of this story.